The Lord Healed My Stomach—Twice.

And The Second Time Was This Month

The first time was at Bethel in Redding, two years ago. I was on a long trip—flying to Austin the next day after just getting back from Europe—and I was having serious gut issues, specifically with my gallbladder.

I remember being in my hotel room, and if you’ve ever been sick and away from home, you know it’s the absolute worst. The pain was intense. And to be honest, I lean way more agnostic about healing than most charismatics—especially when it comes to my own body. I can believe for others, no problem. But when it’s me? Not so much.

Still, I asked Jesus—no background music, no spiritual hype, just from my bed, half-watching Band of Brothers—to heal me. And immediately, like within seconds, I felt this warm tingling right where the pain was. A heat, almost electrical, centered exactly where the inflammation had been. And then the pain just… melted away. Like the tingling ate it. It was wild. I started crying—not because I was trying to manufacture some spiritual moment, but because I’d never experienced anything like that before. I could feel Jesus in the room. It was quiet and intimate and overwhelmingly real.

The second time was just a month ago.

I was in Canada, visiting my parents, watching my dad begin the process of transitioning his church. For the last six months, I’d been dealing with intense pain in my lower left abdomen—especially after eating or drinking certain foods. I tried fasting, diet restrictions, cutting things out one by one. I did that for about six weeks. But as soon as I reintroduced anything that had previously triggered it, the pain came back at a ten.

As I mentioned earlier, my dad trained a pretty substantial prophetic prayer team—especially in receiving words of knowledge. I hadn’t really seen them operate in a while, so I was mostly a casual observer that Sunday. About three songs in, they started flashing words of knowledge on the screen. One of them was colitis.

Which just so happened to be the exact thing Chat had told me I probably had after I listed out all my symptoms a few weeks earlier.

Long story short, I walk up to my dad. He was free at the altar, which is rare—normally there’s a line of people waiting to be ministered to by him. But in this moment, he was standing alone, speaking in tongues, just waiting. I told him I’d seen colitis pop up on the screen, and that I’d been dealing with pain in that exact area for months—either colitis or something close enough to call it that.

He didn’t do anything dramatic. No oil. No fanfare. No laying on of hands that looked like a WWE finisher. He just gently placed a hand on my stomach, prayed a short, simple prayer—thirty seconds, maybe less—and that was that.

No theatrics. No spiritual gymnastics. No slow-building pad undergirded with electric guitar swells.

Because here's the thing: my job isn’t to whip myself into some frothy, charismatic frenzy to prove I have faith. And his job isn’t to manufacture one either. If God is going to heal, He’s going to heal. Period. No amount of Pentecostal posturing or hyper-anointed yammering is going to change that. It might make you feel more involved, but I’m not sure God is impressed by volume or sweat.

We’re Charismatics who like to give God the chance to get all the glory—full stop. And when you start leaning into formulas or spiritualized performance art, it stops being about God and starts becoming about the method. About the person. Forgive me, but that’s just how I see it. I’ve seen too many altar calls become auditions. Too many prayers turn into potions.

And let’s be honest—how many times have I been prayed for and nothing happened?

lol. Easily hundreds. Maybe more if you count healing lines I got dragged into at conferences I didn’t even want to be at. You start to feel like a spiritual crash test dummy after a while. Hopeful, but also cynical in a way you can’t fully admit.

So yeah, I walked away from that altar call. Nothing changed. No tingle. No warmth. No cinematic swelling of ambient pads to signal divine activity.

I flew back to Florida, business as usual. Got ready for a quick trip to Albuquerque, and then two weeks in Italy. Still on my restricted diet, avoiding foods I knew would trigger the pain. At that point, I’d basically made peace with the idea that I might just be stuck with this thing—whatever “this thing” was. I didn’t need it to define me, but I also didn’t want to pretend it wasn’t real.

In Rome, for the first few days, I played it safe. No wheat, no dairy, no alcohol. My culinary life was basically sad vegetables and longing glances at other people’s plates. And believe me, when you’re in Rome and saying no to pizza, pasta, and Aperol, you start to wonder why you even have a passport.

But then, maybe out of resignation, maybe out of faith, or maybe just out of sheer tourist fatigue, I broke. We ordered an Aperol Spritz. They brought out those white circle-cracker things—harmless looking, but packed with everything I’m not supposed to eat. I ate them. Grains and alcohol are, historically, a nuclear combo for my gut. But… nothing. No flare-up. No pain.

Later that night, I ate pizza.

Then more pizza the next day.

Then a Negroni or two in Florence, where they were invented. Then red wine in Tuscany, the Hiroshima of choices. Not all in one sitting—but over the next few days, I kept eating the exact foods that were supposed to level me. Pasta. Bread. Alcohol. Repeat.

And… still nothing. No pain. No inflammation. No curling into a ball fifteen minutes after a meal. I kept waiting for the hammer to drop. It didn’t.

I didn’t say anything at first. Not to my Dad. Not to my friends. Partly because I didn’t want to jinx it. Partly because I wasn’t sure what was happening. But mostly because after months of restriction and quiet pain, the absence of pain feels disorienting. You don’t celebrate. You just pause. You wait. You hold your breath.

And slowly, I realized: I’d been healed.

Not in the altar moment. Not in the prayer. But somewhere between obedience, surrender, Aperol, and a city built on ruins.

I get back to the States and immediately dive into this intense health kick—full throttle. It’s not just a phase. I’m tracking macros, eating in a caloric deficit, lifting every day, taking like ten different supplements. Creatine, magnesium, turmeric, electrolytes—the full Gwyneth-meets-Goggins routine. I’m disciplined to the point of obsession, but in that high-functioning way that gets confused for virtue in America.

And here’s the thing: my stomach still isn’t reacting. That’s what starts freaking me out. I’m like—wait, why am I not in pain right now? My gut isn’t behaving like it used to. It’s like the familiar enemy is gone and now I don’t know who I am without it. I don’t trust it. I’m waiting for the ambush.

So I decide to run a test. A real one. Like, Jurassic Park style—when they’re not sure if the electric fence is actually off, and someone throws a stick at it, and then someone else touches it to be sure.

This weekend, I touched the fence.

I opened it up on the highway. No seatbelt. No hesitation. I ate and drank all the stuff that has historically wrecked me—actual nightmare ingredients. Things that didn’t just upset my stomach but crippled me. We’re talking grains, dirty martini’s, fats, dairy, things that used to punch holes in my intestines and turn me into a fetal-position prayer warrior in under fifteen minutes.

And nothing happened.

Nothing.

I’m healed, dude.

Like… actually healed. And not in a vague, “I feel a little better” kind of way. But in the no longer governed by fear of food way. It’s hard to describe how wild that is unless you’ve lived with chronic physical pain—especially pain that no one else can see, and that often gets written off as anxiety, or food sensitivity, or psychosomatic drama. It gaslights you. You learn to pre-apologize for your stomach like it’s a problematic friend who always ruins dinner parties.

But now? Nothing. No pain. No reaction. Just… freedom.

Today I’m back on my usual regimen. Morning: olive oil and a shake. Dinner: a full pound of grass-fed chuck sautéed in olive oil and white vinegar, followed by sauerkraut and watermelon. Don’t judge—my gut is weird and this combo works. It’s around 1500 calories. Clean. Tight. Fuel.

Also—I’ve put on like eight pounds in the last three weeks so I need to pay the piper and get back on the “abs before 50” journey.

But my point? God heals.

He does. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I’m living it right now. And yet—I don’t pretend to understand why it happens when it does. Why some people get healed and others don’t. Why some prayers get answered in seconds and others echo into silence. I still have issues I’m praying for. Still have prayers that feel like voicemails. But this time—this time—He did it.

So now I’m asking the other question: why now?

Why this healing, in this season, at this intersection of everything else that’s happening in my life? Because maybe the healing itself wasn’t the main point. Maybe it was a means to an end. Maybe it was God saying, Look at Me. I’m trying to tell you something. I’m trying to get your attention.

And I want to know what He’s saying.

Because I’m listening. I’m alert. I’m not just grateful—I’m tuned in. Not just to the healing, but to the Healer. Because perhaps that’s the whole point—not the absence of pain, but the presence of God. Not the fixed stomach, but the realignment of attention. A holy interruption in the rhythm of my assumptions.

And now I’m listening.

-N

Photo by Daniel Fontenele on Unsplash